Audi’s Green Takes Top Honours For Test Day 3

Ingolstadt’s new signing, Jamie Green, gave the “Four Rings” the fastest lap time on Day 3, as the intense testing continued, with young rookie and last minute replacement for the departing Ralf Schumacher, Pascal Wehrlein, showing early promise for Mercedes-Benz, coming a close second in the day’s times behind “Mr. Norisring.”

The 18-year-old said his fond farewell to the FIA F3 Championship by securing 2 podium finishes and 1 race win at Monza the other weekend, was only just 0.065 seconds behind the Leicester driver. Filipe Albuquerque locked out the top three, meaning the fastest BMW driver this time around was Team Schnitzer‘s Dirk Werner in 7th. Marco Wittman, who made his first official test debut, covered 178 laps in total, but was only 0.571 seconds behind Green on the day’s tap time leaderboard.

Andy Priaulx also took to the track, along with fellow Munich driver Joey Hand, who was clearly getting the most mileage on the board, by covering 2012 laps total throughout the day. All four BMW drivers covered over a minimum of 165 laps at the very least, with Wittmann happy with his first outing in his new Ice-Watch M3 DTM: “I felt really comfortable in the car, and the collaboration with my BMW Team MTEK already is very good. It’s important for us to perfectly adapt to one another and to make for perfect work flows to get in the best possible shape for the season kick-off. And today was a good step on the way in this direction.”

Green was happy with the day’s scheduled program with Audi Sport, having completed over 100 laps in the afternoon session, and the RS 5 DTM suffered no technical issues throughout the day, but said that completing high mileage was the key for him to settle easily into the new office: “The same applies to the collaboration with my race engineer and my data engineer – and the tests at Barcelona represented a good opportunity to improve this collaboration. The DRS wing also makes a positive impression. The effect won’t be as big as in Formula 1 and the overtaking won’t be as easy as there but it will make overtaking easier, nevertheless. Today, we also learned a lot about the option tyres that are clearly faster than the standard tyres.”

Rookie Wehrlein felt great, after his first test with Mercedes, and is looking ahead to continuing the hard work that both he and Mucke Motorsport have ahead of them both at Barcelona and Hockenheim, before the racing kicks off on May 5th, but is staying realistic on what is to come: “As things went rather well, today, I massively look forward to the tests tomorrow and to Hockenheim. For me as rookie it’s crucial to learn as much as possible that will prove to be helpful in the season. I think we gathered a lot of data and findings today that will allows us to make a step forward. It goes without saying that having set the second fastest time feels great – but I’m aware that this is just a test and will keep my feet on the ground.”

The final test of the Barcelona test will see all the teams cover some serious mileage, before it all shifts to Hockenheim in a week’s time, as the countdown for Day X continues at a fast-closing rate…